I got a chance to walk around Bryn Mawr for a bit yesterday, and thought I’d snap a few shots with my phone. These spots are memorable to me for various reasons..
Archive for the ‘Random Thoughts’ Category
September 6, 2010
Memorable Spots in Bryn Mawr
August 20, 2010
Breaking my rules
I come up with strange rules for myself sometimes. One of the big ones over the last few years has been keeping the frequency I listen to certain songs in check for fear of killing a good one — we’ve all done this.. think back to hearing Kryptonite on the radio one too many times in ninth grade. I’ll also keep from hitting the Christmas tunes hard until December starts — if I listened to Karen Carpenter year round, it would ruin the flashbacks I get decorating the tree back in nineties, and that would be a big problem for me. Please note that Ke$ha is immune to this phenomenon.
Anyway, I broke a rule this morning. When Alan and I went to Tennessee back in 2007, I had my first cappuccino, and it was something of an other world. When I went to visit Mike in San Diego last year, I had another. And so I started to drink cappuccino only when I went on vacation.. two more times I got out to San Diego, once to Dallas, Houston, and various other smaller trips in between. The drink has become part of my vacation experience. This morning though, I’m drinking cappuccino–I feel so dangerous. It’s an unusual day though, so I don’t think breaking the rules will ruin my vacation treat.
Tags: cappuccino, nostalgia, rules
August 13, 2010
Back to the Future will always be relevant
Over the last few weeks, I’ve thought a lot about my life since April. Ignoring the emotional complexities of late, I’ve found my memory of this time to be sort of fascinating in that at times over the past few days, I’ve had these nostalgic feelings — but not nostalgic like a birthday or graduation. This nostalgia has a dream-like/alternate universe tinge to it that has me dangerously close to questioning its actual reality. Inception jokes aside, I say this as an attempt to express how cinematic it all feels in hindsight, while knowing I was in fact there breathing/seeing/thinking/etc. Let me explain.
A month ago, I was living a life that I felt stable and satisfied with. My stresses were minimal, and I was doing what I wanted to be doing with myself. When life changed suddenly, a few things happened. First, and most obvious, was that volatility that shakes all your pieces around like dice in one of those yahtzee cups. Next, which was less obvious at the time, but apparent to me now, is how one day my life was focused on a particular set of things, and the next I found those things completely boggled around (excuse all the board game metaphors.. I like board games). Everything changed as quickly is it did back in the spring — this has an unfortunate poetry to it. The sudden change though, is why I feel the early summer was some parallel existence.
Almost like in Back to the Future, when Marty goes back and decides to push George McFly out of the way of Lorraine’s father’s car, which ends up hitting Marty instead of George. If Marty doesn’t play superhero, he wouldn’t have ended up in his mother’s bed sans pants — and so things begin to spin off accordingly. Back in March, I wasn’t quite feeling up to staying out after an already long and exciting night in the city, but we continued on, and I found myself dancing with Daphne — so like Marty’s heroic act, this event marked the beginning of a digression from my status quo… and without it, life would have presumably continued on, business as usual.
On the flip side, Marty’s existence is instantly restored (mostly) to life as he knew it, pre-car accident, when George finally plants one on Lorraine Baines at the Enchantment Under the Sea Dance. The details of my departure from an alternate reality are a little rougher around the edges, but the idea is still the same. Referencing Back to the Future is somewhat inverted since Marty got himself into a situation he was trying to escape from, where I would have gladly hung out in my 1955 a bit longer.
I guess I’ve found that although a person can have vivid, conscious experiences, cataclysmic changes that bookend this period of time can make it feel a bit surreal. I don’t think there’s anything one might do about controlling how these events play out. If you could, change wouldn’t be so sudden, but instead expected and likely more gradual. And though change has come for me in the form of great packages as well as dismal ones, ultimately it’s always led me to an improved state of being — perhaps there could have been better paths, but I don’t feel I’ve ever pulled “Go Back to Baltic Avenue” from the Community Chest. Full steam ahead.
July 28, 2010
On Lemons
I’ve been hauling around a pretty big basket of lemons for the past week or so. It was heavy enough to pull me to a struggling crawl when handed to me. Though it seems that through the struggle, I’ve misplaced a few of these lemons — some I’ve whipped at the wall, and others I’ve let fall to the floor unnoticed.
I’m not quite ready to open a lemonade stand at the end of 5th Avenue. The last few months showed me euphoric peaks I had never reached before — the ascent to which I sucked in every bit of thin air I could. I was high in every sense of the word. Falling from this altitude has been a fully volatile experience, but not completely untameable. A substantive existence has eased the descent.
I know mostly what works for me, and how I prefer to go about parading around in this city. There are moments of discouragement that pull you toward being in an infintely bitter pessimism about the way people fit into your life, but I’ve refused that path — I’ve seen it, and it’s not for me. Ultimately, I’m an optimist, and have found this keeps my world spinning in the right direction.
At present, I don’t understand where this is all supposed to take me, but I do know that I wouldn’t change how it all came crashing in. For now, my blueprint is to take it all as it comes. Just, you know… be open… get back to basics.
April 29, 2010
On Nostalgia
Last Thursday, I celebrated with friends for making it through the year to another Earth Day. I enjoyed their company, and as a nostalgic person, will remember these past few days for some time. When I have a cinematic night like this, I tend to think about existential things.
Lately, I’ve had a few laughs with some of my friends in what I like to call “get off my lawn moments”. How it works is, I’ll be in some random place, and make some remark toward a seemingly misguided youth — we laugh, and acknowledge what is happening to us as we age. Most of these occurances are insignficant, but there are others I feel more strongly about. Last week, my friend wrote about the days of playing outside in the evening — the imagery of fireflies, porch lights, and cool grass really sent my head into the clouds for a few minutes. If you read it, I’m certain you’ll flashback too — it couldn’t be painted more colorfully. What I want to say though, is that I can’t imagine growing up without these (my) memories — and this is silly because people generally don’t miss what they never had. “But we played outside, and threw tennis balls over powerlines, and it was magicial, blah, blah”, I’ll say. I’ve been throwing this adjective all over the place lately, but things were good.. just good — actually, they were great, but if you put the emphasis on the ‘good’, for example, “Mm, life is frickin’ good”, I would hear that as “Damn, things are just simply fantastic”. I wouldn’t have wanted to grow up with youtube coaxing me to my musty basement for hours at a time. I won’t mislead you.. we played NES and Sega Genesis, and we played them a lot. What I fear is that post-Jurassic Park youths are just the beginning of generations that won’t enjoy the sensory overload of summer evenings that chiseled my childhood memories into what they are today. I know it’s supposed to workout though — I’m certain my parents had similar trouble with my brother and I glued to the Nintendo, and we’ve both grown to hold some good times up in our nogins.
On the other hand, to me, the beauty of nostalgia is that it’s unique and non-transferrable. The days I ran around the woods by Miller’s Pond mean nothing to you — you may care, and be interested in learning about me, but ultimately, even though I might be able to tell you exactly what a day was like for me (the sun was shining, my knees were scratched, life as a fourth grader is perfect, fum fum fum), that memory is exceptionally impossible to completely recreate for another person. This is a bittersweet realization for me. Sour because I can’t possibly convey the entire scope of what I recall, and oh so sweet because the way an otherwise simple event is massaged into something extraordinary makes me feel very alive.
December 25, 2009
Merry Christmas!
Tags: photos
February 10, 2009
On The Dynamics Of Lyrics
I’ve been thinking a lot about lyrics lately, and how they dynamically work with the supporting instruments. These thoughts are underdeveloped, but I felt the need to share. Writing effective lyrics has always been a difficult area for me — I feel much more capable of writing interesting progressions. The way vocals complement accompaniment is somewhat of a creative science though.
It seems that some words/phrases sound extraordinarily well with their accompaniment. Phonemes have, what I think, the ability to uniquely bring life to a musical phrase. Think of a phrase in a song that for some reason sounds perfect the way it is, and now change the words — retain the melody, but switch up the words. Now, ignoring the chance that you picked silly words, think about how the notes feel with the phonemes of your new lyrics. The variation in vowels and consonants play a significant role in flow of the song.
Every so often, I just hear the perfect implementation of music and lyrics, and I think of how that phrase came to be. I imagine there are no rules for a finding these phrases, and it’s more of finding out what is dynamically compatible with your own voice and playing style.
Tags: lyrics, music, songwriting
July 18, 2006
Continuum
John Mayer’s new album “Continuum” is due out on 9/12. The track listing is below… I’ll be checking him out live at the Tweeter Center in Camden on 9/2.
Waiting On The World To Change
I Don’t Trust Myself (With Loving You)
Belief
Gravity
The Heart of Life
Vultures
Slow Dancing in a Burning Room
Stop This Train
Bold As Love
Dreaming With A Broken Heart
In Repair
I’m Gonna Find Another You
Tags: music